Jeff Bezos To Donald Trump And Peter Thiel: Develop A Thick Skin

Jeff Bezos delivered an impassioned defense of the First Amendment on Tuesday, sharply criticizing both Donald Trump and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel while urging them to "develop a thick skin."

In light of recent news that Thiel funded lawsuits to damage Gawker Media, the Amazon CEO and owner of The Washington Post told a crowd of tech executives that it's a slippery slope to attack a media company that is reporting on the wealthy or powerful.

"This country has the best free speech protections in the world not only because of the Constitution, but also because of our cultural norms and you don't want to erode those," Bezos said during an on-stage interview at Recode's Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

While that kind of talk would be expected from the owner of a major national newspaper, Bezos didn't stop there, later calling out the Republican presidential candidate for his attempts to "freeze or chill the media that's examining him." It was perhaps, as interviewer Walt Mossberg encapsulated, the "Bezos Doctrine," an open defense of Gawker and other news publications, which Bezos argued should be free to criticize billionaires (like himself) and corporations (like Amazon) without fear of retribution.

Bezos received warm applause from the tech-heavy crowd for stance on free speech and freedom of the press.

Ironically Gawker has gone after Bezos and his companies plenty of times, and over the years has hammered Amazon for its treatment of warehouse workers. While Bezos didn't address Gawker specifically, he indirectly defended their right to publish those reports, noting that anyone doing anything important in the world is going to have its critics. As for seeking reprisal against negative reports, Bezos went on to loosely quote Confucius: "
Seek revenge and you shall dig two graves, one for yourself."

With regards to unflattering stories about his own company, Bezos discussed a scathing
New York Times report in the fall that criticized Amazon's workplace culture. He said that he was proud of the atmosphere he had built at Amazon, something that could not have been done "with a set of miserable people watching the clock all day."

"I always talk about 'work-life harmony' as opposed to 'work-life balance,'" he said, unveiling a new phrase that he uses in the three leadership classes he teaches at his company every year.

Beyond that, Bezos also discussed his company's fast-growing artificial intelligence business centered around voice assistant Alexa and its Amazon Echo personal speaker. The Amazon CEO said that the company had been working on the products for more than four years and now has more than 1,000 people working on various related projects. He refused to discuss the company's future product road map and punted on a question as to whether the Seattle-based retailer was working on wearable devices.

Conversation, however, quickly gravitated back to one of Bezos' more recent passions: The Washington Post. The billionaire said he would have never bought The Post for $250 million if not for his 15-year relationship with previous owner, Don Graham.

"The reason I finally bought it is because I thought it was an important institution," he said. "If it was a financially upside-down, salty snack food company I would not have bought it... This is the paper best situated to cover the capital city of the most important country in the world."

On that note, he addressed Trump who has frequently criticized Amazon and The Post for its coverage.

"Half the population on the planet live in countries where if they criticize their leader, they could go to jail or worse," he said. "We live in democracy with freedom of speech. A presidential candidate should embrace that: 'I'm running for president of the most important country in the world. Please examine me.'"

I'm a San Francisco-based reporter covering the agitators in technology and e-commerce. I started at Forbes as a member of the wealth team, putting together the magazine's well-known World Billionaires and Forbes 400 lists. I've worked at a number of publications including ...